Many employers provide employee benefits, in the form of various benefits, plans and programs (hereinafter referred to as “benefits”), to their employees as part of their total compensation packages. These benefits may include employer provided personnel benefits, health insurance benefits, disability insurance benefits, life insurance benefits, pension benefits, retirement benefits, stock option programs, profit sharing programs, employee savings accounts and plans, employee credit union accounts and services, employee discount programs, and other valuable benefits and programs. The list can go on to include other employer-specific or industry-specific benefits.
Oftentimes, the benefits which are provided to employees are so numerous and complex in understanding how to take advantage of them, that the employee may not be aware of them or know how to take advantage of them. In other instances, the providers of the benefits may be difficult to deal with or may not be easily accessible to the employee. In these instances, the employee will have to expend efforts and time, sometimes amounting to great efforts and a great deal of time, in order to obtain a benefit or information about a benefit.
Frustration may result when benefits may be too difficult or complicated to obtain or to gain access to, especially when benefits are not easily understood or when benefits providers are difficult to deal with or to communicate with. Given the fact that most employees seek benefits during the workday, company or employer time and resources are expended by the employee in attending to benefits matters, usually at the employer's expense.
The offering and the administration of employee benefits typically requires that a vast amount of diverse and complex information be managed, administered, and be constantly monitored by administrators. Employees must also be assisted in their efforts to claim or gain access to their benefits and/or to information related thereto.
The administration of employee benefits and benefits plans and programs also requires that competent administrators be employed by the employer in order to administer and oversee these programs. These administrators typically provide administrative and managerial services and often must interact with the various benefits providers in order to ensure that the providers comply with their obligations under the plans or programs. Administrators must also keep the employees appraised of changes to, and/or the status of, these benefits.
The administrators must also deal with instances when employees have difficulty in obtaining benefits and/or benefit information. Administrators must also deal with other benefits-related issues as they arise.
As can be easily seen, great amounts of time, money and resources are expended in offering and administering an employee benefits plan or program. Even greater amounts are expended when benefits and/or benefits information are not readily available to, or accessible by, the employee.
Even when administrators do their jobs well, the typically large ratios of employees to administrators can oftentimes hinder the ability of employees to receive all of the information and/or assistance they might need in order to obtain benefits, obtain benefits information, or to resolve difficulties in dealing with benefits providers. Employees who may have to expend unnecessary amounts of time and energy, during the working day and/or while on company time, in seeking benefits and/or benefits information which should otherwise be easily and readily available to them.
The above described characteristics of typical employee benefits plans and programs can result in great costs to employers in the form of monetary costs, company resources being inefficiently utilized and in less than optimal output from employees.